Whenever someone asks me where I live, they commonly mistake the name with San Juan Capistrano. No, it’s San Juan Bautista, known for it’s Mission and historical park. Other than tourism to this small city of history, the region is primarily rural and the main industry is agriculture. :-p

Hitchcock fans know San Juan Bautista from the famous tower scene in Vertigo. Believe it or not, the state park looks pretty much the same as it did when Hitch filmed here back in the 1950s. In fact, theres some exciting news about the Vertigo 50th anniversary coming up next year

Visitors familiar with the quaint little town, might think of the Chickens which roamed freely through the streets. Earlier this year most them were removed earlier because the population was growing unchecked.

Some people might know of San Juan Bautista as home to El Teatro Campesino, the theater company of Luis Valdez formed during the 1960s with Cesar Chavez, leader of the striking United Farmworkers of America.

Anyways I’m getting sidetracked…

Our little town is drawing some notoriety for the recent Virulent Strain of E.Coli linked to prepackaged Spinach produced by Earthbound Farm / Natural Selection Foods, here in San Juan Bautista. This is a bad public relations scenario for the salad packing company, and for all of the farmers in the area who have prospered from the “organic” food movement. [With the bit of farming knowledge i have- go figure eh? :-p ], I can speculate that the source of the problem is probably not the fault of the packaging company, or even the farmers. It’s probably due to a batch of organic fertilizer that wasn’t properly composted, and used on a spinach field.

There’s concern that this stigma might effect the small tourism industry here. There are quite a few restaurants in town, and the last thing they need is some kind of association with food poisoning. No cases have been reported locally, and everyone around here buys the Natural Selection Products. It’s still better to be safe than sorry, and toss out that packaged spinach.